Even though I'm one of those geezers who is supposed to cling to copper wires to the bitter end, I'm not a fan of land line phones. We live in a rural area and our land line reliability was the pits. I was happy to say goodbye to the bill and the frustration of picking up the phone, not hearing a dial tone, and dealing with "Ernestine" at the phone company.
I thought I heard someone call my name.
We pay $25/month for our landline (which is surprisingly reliable), and we paid something like $90 for an answering machine whose ringers we can turn off. We don't have to tell anyone to put us on their do-not-call lists... their computers detect the answering machine and never call again. After a year or so we're removed from everyone's lists, although we do have problems with election years.
This system is amazingly effective for our friends, who know to either (1) send us an e-mail, (2) leave a voicemail and we'll call back when we walk by the phone, or (3) leave us alone. Yes, we miss out on a lot of short-notice "opportunities". Thank goodness.
Another unexpected benefit is that our daughter has learned to solve her own problems instead of outsourcing their solution to Dial-A-Dad. These days we get voicemail along the lines of "Here's my problem, here's what I'm thinking, call me back within x hours if you get the chance, or else I'll send you an e-mail to tell how it worked out-- love you, bye!" Best empty-nester present ever.
Meanwhile Hawaii's ridges & valleys practically guarantee crappy cell-phone connectivity (as verified by our daughter whenever she's home on break). Our pay-as-you-go cell phone costs a minimum of $20 every 30 days. Even when we pay $1.99 for the day's first call, we'll still finish a month with a $12 balance. It's fun to see Verizon get so upset when we let the money lapse at the 30-day mark and then don't reload the phone until the 89-day mark.
So, between the robocalls and the cell-phone hassles, I can see us sticking with a landline and an answering machine for a long, long time.